Poll: What KDE Feature Do You Most Want?

Polls are an oft-requested feature of the dot. KDE.com has risen to the challenge with its latest user poll: "What Should Be the Highest Priority of KDE Developers Leading Up to KDE 2.2?". I just installed Linux Mandrake 7.2 (until my SuSE package arrives), and after upgrading to KDE 2.1.1, I feel that a KDE port of the configuration utilities could bring a huge amount of polish to this distribution. A KDE interface to Linuxconf might be a good start. Others would however prefer a KDE installer, and some simply think that KDE should be faster and/or less of a memory hog. Here's your chance to cast a vote and voice an opinion.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Mike Ladwig (not verified)

I would like a panel applet that would take over the display of the application menu and display it wherever I put it on a panel. With this, I could duplicate the MacOS menubar's mixture of application and system features, not possible with the existing "in the style of MacOS" feature.

by Stuart Ballard (not verified)

Better KDE/GNOME interop!

I want, for example, Konqueror to automatically notice that it's running under GNOME and use my selected GNOME theme by default. (oh, and I want the "legacy theme importer" to not crash on my choice of theme, and I'd like the name "legacy" removed).

I want embedding of KParts in Bonobo, and vice versa. I want to be able to embed a Gnumeric spreadsheet into KWord and then use KChart to graph it.

I want drag'n'drop and cut'n'paste to be seamless between the two environments. I want prefs I set in one to be honored by the other, where applicable.

In short, I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO CARE which desktop I'm running. Right now my desktop is GNOME, but I'm increasingly using KDE apps and it's frustrating that they don't fit in. And I'm sure the same goes for KDE users who want to use GNOME apps. Getting the interoperability better should be priority #1 in my humble opinion.

Stuart.

by Kevin Puetz (not verified)

well, perhaps the name legacy should go as it's kinda inappropriate now, but I think it was originally there because the importer was a tool for importing KDE1 themes. So it wasn't a slur or anything, promise :-)

by dingodonkey (not verified)

Allow simple applications (for config) to be easily embedded into the control center, and then distributions can take it from there... support for linuxconf modules in the control center would be nice too, but these are low priorities.

My biggest concern is the capabilities of Konqueror (javascript is a serious issue), KOffice, and the slow loading time of KDE when you first log in. I run on a 750MHz Duron with 256mb of memory and 512mb of swap, and still have these problems.

Those are my biggest concerns. A good Office environment is vital, but speed (and stability) should come first.

by VK (not verified)

The most important thinks has already been written.

I have only a small wish for next releases:

Upload changed remote file on action "Save" not "Quit"....

CMIIAW

by Magnar Hirschberger (not verified)

Hallo Users & Hackers!

It's very easily to say what is that kde most needed feature: The stability followd by the speed of the hole thing.

Recent the KDE is very slow and have an high mimeory consumption; 64 MByte aren't enough for that (!). The hardware requirements appear to be higher as from Windoze 2000!

A lot of the shipped apps show an unstable behavior. KOffice is THE extrem cause: Start an KOffice app like KWord and try to work something. You don't need more as 15 min. to the next bomb of kcrashguard appears.

The problems of konqui with JavaScript are not so important if the complains someone concern ...

I started with KDE 1.0 and to 1.2 the things appeared more stable as the KDE 2.1 today. Features are the one thing, but imcomplete without enough stability and speed.

Magnar Hirschberger

> I started with KDE 1.0 and to 1.2 the things
> appeared more stable as the KDE 2.1 today.

So you are using 2.1 and complain about stability? Try latest stable, 2.1.2!

by David Jarvie (not verified)

Faster login and logout, please.

by Charles de Miramon (not verified)

Hello,
I'm using Kde more and more but I still have to go back to the Microsoft World to do must of my serious work...

From my point of view : an historian writing articles and having a years of notes kept in files what is keeping me from making the great switch to Kde and Linux is not only a good wordprocessor but also a full-text indexer like FastIndex for Windows that make possible to find quickly a file from his content.
My wish therefore is a program that would index in the background my text files (ASCII, HTML, XML, Latex, LyX, Koffice) and a plug-in for Konqueror and Kword to search for the files. An even more powerfull mechanism would be to add in the index metadata about these files, like owner, long name, keywords, annotations etc...
It seems that Eazel with Medusa has something more or less similar but I have not tryed it.

If this KfastIndex module is developped that would be another step to create a better alternative to Windows and Lotus Notes.

Cheers,
Charles

As many have said, putting a KDE face on LinuxConf is nothing I'd like. What I would like to see though, is a KDE configurator for X.

Editing XFConfig and XFConfig-4 is a daunting task for any newbie or GUI enthusiast - yet so necessary at times. I'd donate a chocolate cookie or two the person who creates a KDE configurator for those two files.

The main features would be to change Screen Resolution, Color Depth and Monitor type. In the advanced section there would be checkboxes for Xinerama, DRI and GLX. Ahh, nice...

by James Stewart (not verified)

Developing the KOffice Suite should be the top priority, especially developing interoperability with MS Office products and MS Word specifically. This would be the most significant improvement to get Linux/KDE accepted on the desktop.

However, here are some close seconds that apply at least in my case:

Konqueror is slow, and memory hungry. This is especially true if you try to open multiple windows. Otherwise, I really like what has been done here.

KDE in general is slow and memory hungry. More so than the current Gnome project (but not by much) and more than the MS products.

---------

I feel that there is too much attention in current GUIs to make them customizable. In many cases, all this customization confuses users. I think a very simple yet useful and consistent GUI is better. This is something I appreciated about BeOS.

All in all I think the KDE team is producing impressive results, I hope you can keep the momentum going.

James Stewart

by linuxdewd (not verified)

* Speedier with smaller memory footprint. Faster startup of Konqueror (as a filemanager)
* The bug with rectangles on a NVidia driver should be fixed once and for all.
* KOffice should be 99.9 % compatible with MS Office. No vbscript though.
* Much better Icons. Really now, the icons (expecially the large ones) are horrible.. Icons from the Slick theme (see kde.themes.org) are excelent
* Closing a Window if pressing Ctrl + Left Click on the Taskbar
* Huge efforts should be put in Noatun and Kaboodle
* KVirc instead of KSirc, Kpass in kdeutils
* Maybe a unbloated Active Desktop like the one in Windoze ?
* smarter KDM and the posibility to run a program before KDM
* Something similar with "View as Music" in Nautilus would be cool.
* I don't think that a KDE Installer should be made. The efforts should be put in KPackage and a install option for a *.rpm, *.deb should be put in konqui.
* KMail should be optimised for large mail-directories.
* Get Mosfet to work on the UI Engine again ! ;) .. btw. MegaGradient style doens't work very well

by dingodonkey (not verified)

About the icons... I think KDE has wonderful icons, but the smaller ones need some work here and there. I think the slick icons are nice with a dark theme like that, but not for normal use for the average user. This is just my opinion, of course. I do, however, like the icons from photon (picture, link). Still, they are not as good as the KDE icons (although the icon used for the K menu is pretty catchy).

You're right, a KDE Installer should not be a high priority. If somebody feels like contributing one, fine, but don't go out of the way for it. Most KDE users that I know of are using KDE from an out-of-the-box distro, and this is handled for them.

by dingodonkey (not verified)

About the icons... I think KDE has wonderful icons, but the smaller ones need some work here and there. I think the slick icons are nice with a dark theme like that, but not for normal use for the average user. This is just my opinion, of course. I do, however, like the icons from photon (picture, link). Still, they are not as good as the KDE icons (although the icon used for the K menu is pretty catchy).

You're right, a KDE Installer should not be a high priority. If somebody feels like contributing one, fine, but don't go out of the way for it. Most KDE users that I know of are using KDE from an out-of-the-box distro, and this is handled for them.

MegaGradient is still under development. If there is a bug that doesn't show up on http://www.mosfet.org/megagradient.html let me know! Most of the drawing bugs are when you first change to the style or change the color scheme and shouldn't appear in normal use (but have to be fixed! I'm working on it - but want to get extended color schemes into CVS). I hope to have all this stuff working well way before 2.2 is released.

>Much better Icons. Really now, the icons (expecially the large ones) are horrible..<

You're welcome to create some new icons. I think that default kde icons are great, especially large ones 48x48. Some improvement of some actions icons is necessary
(editcut, for example), but I think that only Tackat works on kde icons, and creating nice and usable icons is extremly hard task. Try to create an icon set, and you will see how hard it is.

by Charles Hill (not verified)

Here is my list -- mostly just refinements on what exists.

KMail: distribution lists, IMAP support, Outlook (not "Express") .PST import, header-only download, selective e-mail download.

KNode: Multi-part MIME support. I've seen this in other, GPL, KDE news readers. Can't that code be incorporated?

KOffice: Correct view/import/export of MS Word & Excel 95/97/2000 file formats -- including embedded MS DRAW images.

-Charles

by LukeyBoy (not verified)

Try Pan (sorry though it's GNOME) at http://pan.rebelbase.com.

by Stephen Boulet (not verified)

Yes you can backup your Palm data with kpilot or (even better) jpilot, but can you use those email addresses with kmail? Not yet.

by Kreg Steppe (not verified)

I first want to say... KDE 2.1.1 Rocks. Very usable.

One feature that comes to mind would be have Konqui a little more intergrated with samba.
It would be nice to have the ability to right click on a local folder and create a share, or ability to browse and mount one.

Also I have to admit the Cut and Past thing mentioned above also iritates me. (Copying everything I select)

Thanks a Million for such a wonderful piece of software!

Kreg Steppe

by John Yorke (not verified)

Configuration utilities are definitely what is most required. Display configuration tools (change resolution and colour depth), Network and Samba tools and better support for Samba in the File Manager, Printer Tools (easy printer setup and GUI print job cancelling) etc. Maybe you can get some of this stuff from Corel since they are getting out of the Linux business and they had started to deliver these things. The other projects like KOffice and web stuff are nice to have but are not as important since options like StarOffice and Mozilla exist.

by Carlos Marcello... (not verified)

I think that KDE is the best GUI for UNIX!

But, the Qt library is very very very.... "memory eater", and KDE 2 runs slowly in cheap computers.

i would like a KDE more fast and lite.

well, poll should be equiped of check box, not radio.

its too difficult for me to choose between all of these very importtant thing.

but before doing any graphical KDE installer, maybe a KDEDB could be create to keep file information. to which package this file belong, file version number, etc.

after that, it would be very more easy to build graphical tool for installing/upgrading/erasing any KDE package.

give me feedback about the idea ...
thanks !
somekool

by Martin Juhlin (not verified)

A logout status would be nice, a window that informs me on what is going on. Something that is in two stages.

Step 1) This is where application ask if I want to save or cancel the logout.
Step 2) This is where the termination is going on. When the system is reaching this stage the logout process is non-stoppable and whatever I as a user is trying to do the system will logout. Locking the keyboard or something too my be a good idea. If I hand over the system to ?Mr. Hacker?, he wont be enabled to do anyting that can harm the system or my user without a new login.

Today I feel that I have to baby-sit the logout process and don't know when I can leave the computer or not.

Thank for listen to my comment on the subject.

by Eric Vaandering (not verified)

My current pet peeve is double clicking on the title-bar. KDE 1.1 has 5 options for what this does. KDE 2.x has 2.

I've been double-clicking on title bars to minimize them for years now (first with Motif, then KDE 1). Now it no longer works and it confuses the hell out of me.

Also, why can't we move minimize/maximize/whatever buttons around anymore? This used to be a neat feature of 1.1, but was removed in 2.x

I find myself in agreement with an earlier poster who complained about the Windows-ization of KDE. Lots of us are Unix-diehards too.

Oh yeah, after that a KDE front-end to linuxconf and other things would be great. Work with Mandrake. Linux needs a "Control-panel" equivalent that can do everything but is consistent across all the different apps.

by Martin from Hei... (not verified)

Hi!

1) Don't write letters - vote on the poll-page.
2) Need a help to choose a feature? Look at the page of results.

I (probably among others) suggested this poll and was inspired by bugs.kde.org.

Wish you a nice weekend. Regards Martin

by Salvatore Enric... (not verified)

The KDE feature I would like most is to have the configuration utility configure the whole computer system as much as possible.

The applet I am most insterested in is the system monitor. The KDE one try crashes at startup (running KDE 2.1.1 on MDK 7.2). Thus I have to use the GNOME one. I run KDE applications in a GNOME desktop.

The application I am most interested in is an Outlook clone, like Evolution. I want Kmail, Korganizer, and the addressbook to work with each other. Right now their integration is minimal.

Congratulations and keep up the great work!!

>> I want Kmail, Korganizer, and the addressbook to work with each other.

I suggest you look in the latest issue of Kernel Cousin KDE ( http://kt.zork.net/kde/kde20010427_8.html ) - this issue seems to be currently under discussion.

by Mike Johnshoy (not verified)

I would like to see some inprovements to dekktop drag-and-drop behavior. Look at the functionality provided by "dragtext" on os/2 desktop ...

http://e-vertise.com/dragtext/

It's hard to desribe how many places grag-and-drop really works for you when you use this. For example:

1. drag text from a window and drop it on the desktop. A text file is created witt the text in it.

2. drag some more text and drop it on the text file - it will be appended

3. just drop that same text on the printer and it squirts right out the printer.

by warkda rrior (not verified)

1. Right now, each konsole window can run several shell sessions, accessible through the tabs at the bottom. It should be nice if it where possible to "detach" one of these sessions into a new window (kind of like the Emacs "new frame" command). And maybe later reattach it.

2. A keyboard shortcut to open a new session in a given konsole. I know this would reduce the key combinations passed on to the shell session. So my suggestion is as follows: Shift-Left and Shift-Right should work as usual when the current konsole session has peers on both left and right. But if I press Shift-Left in the leftmost konsole session, it should open a new session instead of wrapping around the session list. Similar for Shift-right.

3. A konsole schema editor. Right now, I have to edit text files to create my own konsole schema.

4. Better handling of session titles: each konsole session should remember the title it had before it got switched away. I have a bash PROMPT_COMMAND that sets the title of the xterm to the current directory. Every time I switch to another session in the same konsole and then back, the title is gone, replaced with the useless text "Konsole". Also, maybe the buttons at the bottom (the list of sessions) should reflect these titles.

5. When I right click on a session button (from the list of sessions at the bottom), I should get either the session menu (from the menubar) or the signals menu.

6. I would be really cool if I could search through the text of a session. This should not be too hard to implement, since the session screen history is already stored somewhere.

That's it for now. As I think of more, I will let you guys know :-)

by Andrea Rizzi (not verified)

>3. A konsole schema editor. Right now, I have to edit text files to create my own konsole schema.

Done, it is on CVS for KDE 2.2

by Susan Calvin (not verified)

Where is it? I can't find it anywhere... ><

by Anonymous (not verified)

"Settings/Configure Konsole...", tab "Schema"

by Oops (not verified)

How about a schema editor that actually works?

by Kenton Groombridge (not verified)

I would love to see Double-Click preferences.

Example:

Inactive Window:
Single click in window -> Activate and pass click
Double click in window -> Active, bring to front

Active Window:
Single click in window -> Pass click.
Double click in window -> Bring to front

Not sure how difficult to implement, but I loved this feature on the Amiga.

KWord that imports MSWord documents.

After all the repeated requests and the shear volume of them at that, I am still amazed that I heard this was mentioned on the mailing list from a developer that:

"If we want this feature we should use abiword".

IMHO this absolutely misses the mark of any real committment to provide a viable alternative to the other platform. Much less take it seriously.

Please, I know this has been a frustrating issue. But please write me that this was just a knee-jerk response brought on by the heat-of-the-moment when the sometimes apparent lack of empathy from the users sometimes seems to overwhelm the patience of the incredibly hard-working development community.

Please tell me that this has *not* become actual policy. Because again, IMHO, this would really be missing the mark in terms of strategy.

Just my .02 cents.

Steven

"Please tell me that this has *not* become actual policy."

It hasn't. That would just be silly! MS Word filters are in the works. Expect to see some in the next release of KOffice and more later.

by Craig Buchek (not verified)

KMail is the KDE app I use the most. I switched over from Netscape about 2 months ago. I really like it but there are some things I'd like to see added.

1. IMAP support. I know, it's being worked on, and should be here soon. It caused me to delay switching for 3 months though.
2. Maildir folders. This allows multiple clients to access the mail messages and prevents corruption of the mail store.
3. Scoring/ranking/killfiles. I want to have important messages (like from my boss) always appear at the top of the list and spam to appear at the bottom, if at all. This should be a part of the filtering.
4. More configuration of the info displayed in the messages list. The columns should be able to be hidden/shown, rearranged. The Also sorting by multiple criteria.
5. Better address book. The current ones (all of them) are almost unusable. Should allow import/export/sharing with Netscape and other address books.
6. LDAP support for global address books.
7. Better right-click context menus. Why can't I set the message status from the context menu?
8. Choice of program to use to launch URLs.

I also use KPresenter and KWord some. They are pretty good (I like them a lot more than Star Office) but need some work on Microsoft Office import/export and keyboard usaeg.

One other thing I would like to see is more general look-and-feel configuration. All themes should have the option of where to place the scroll arrows. I should be able to configure how the file browser looks and acts (what view, directories separate from files, etc.). I should be able to decide whether triple-click-and drag lets me select complete lines or move text.

by Moritz Moeller-... (not verified)

Please, please. I use mutt normally, but using kmail once in a while would be nice and no, I am not going to use mbox mailboxes.

by Whitney (not verified)

What I want is very simple. I want child panels in kicker to be able to dock somewhere and autohide. The main panel isn't big enough and adding a child panel takes up too much screen space.

by Juan Rivero (not verified)

The most important KDE feature (IMHO of course) is Koffice. The most important part of Koffice, in turn, is interoperability with the corresponding Microsoft packages -- Word, Excel and so on. Those of us who live in hostile, i.e Microsoft dominated, environments cannot operate at all unless we can read word documents. KDE itself has all of (if not more than) the features I need -- it is the inability to communicate with colleagues and the university administration that is hurting me most. While there are stopgap measures I can take, these measures are not totally satisfactory.

Oh, yes, and it would be very nice if Kmail would support IMAP. I have to use Netscape messenger to read my mail.

> Oh, yes, and it would be very nice if Kmail
> would support IMAP. I have to use Netscape
> messenger to read my mail.

This is availible in kde 2.2alpha1.

by Dan Clayton (not verified)

Konqueror should be the top priority. It should
be the best browser on any platform! Please don't
make me use Netscape. Konqueror is my default
browser but there are some things it still
doesn't do. My daughter uses Mozilla now and I
noticed that Galeon works well on many sites. I
hate to startup netscape because I know there is
a good chance it will die and take down my system
with it. You can't call that production code.

Koffice is also a high priority but I can use
abiword, gnumeric or even staroffice. Long term
linux won't win big on the desktop without the
functionality of M$office but most people don't
use 90% of it's features. Don't make Koffice as
slow to load as staroffice.

You should limit config tools mostly to KDE
config.

Thnks for all your work. KDE is already great.

by Sam Andersson (not verified)

*shurd* star-office... Do you have all day ?

by Slartibartfas (not verified)

Let the user chose the level of complexity of the interface. Use a simple interface with not so much features where mre features can be activated. SOmehow like Eazel has done it for Nautilus. Look at the Finder of MacOS X. Just one button for back is enough to navigate!

by YEUNG Pui-yi (not verified)

test

by Charlie (not verified)

Regarding the config tools, I think the implicit problem is that the tools that we have don't provide much. The two big problems are:

1) They are a one-to-one wrapper for Unix config files, which are often 10 times more powerful/hard to use than we really need.

For instance, on 1) above, there are several files for networking. One is simply called hostname and holds... the hostname. But wait! The docs explain it may not really be your hostname. (-: Any tool that simply provides a mirror of this "mess" is no better.

2) The tools often get confused or cause confusion when the user want to change the files by hand.

On 2) this is a hard problem, and I have never seen a reasonable solution on Linux or a commercial product like SGIs admin tools.

I think deeper still, the Unix start-up scripts are archaic and difficult. The run levels don't even make sense and most daemons/servers are started the same way, but still require special batch files anyway. All start-up config tools try to wrap this mess. I would LOVE for there to be an alternative to Unix start-up scripts. Just replace them!

Too bad we can't also simplify the basic servers that are hard to config (ftp, http). It would be nice to start a movement to provide a simpler interface to these, then the config tools would fall into place!

In the logout dialog I would like to have these options:

1. Halt
2. Reboot
3. Just plain logout to KDM

I've seen this a long time ago in GNOME.

> 1. Halt
> 2. Reboot
> 3. Just plain logout to KDM

Yes, I would like that too.

by Bruno Majewski (not verified)

To me, top priority should be given to having a printing infrastructure (this includes the UI portion of it letting mere mortals to chose between landscape/portrait, scaling, pages-per-sheet, etc.) and font management system *at least* on par with what MacOS & M$/Windows can do. People need to print stuff and they need for it to look good, you know!

And to be "on par" does not mean to be "just like", it means to be as functional, as capable to produce the same kind of results your typical M$/Word-using corporate report writing systems architect can produce. Not to troll, but there are capabilities commercial OS users usually take for granted that KDE users still don't have -- easily accessible (sp?). Let's hope these glaring missing features will be addressed in KDE version 2.2, because it will probably win a lot of brownie points with many potential users.